


put shutters on my eyes

by aosc



Series: Metal, Dust, Eden [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed, Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Community: asscreedkinkmeme, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 01:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2603567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aosc/pseuds/aosc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has no recollection of how he ended up in this foreign world. For it must be another world — entirely. Altaïr has travelled the vastness of his world — open waters and fraught, green forests, deserts and mountainscapes — only for a few years, but that is how he knows that <i>this</i>, this is not his world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	put shutters on my eyes

**Author's Note:**

> a fill for a prompt on the asscreed kink meme which, well, developed a head. and is developing several more as we speak. i have no idea, but i love the premise of these worlds mixing. right now, this series is gen. it might turn a corner into something more. unbeta’d, but revised as of 2k17.

* * *

 

He has no recollection of how he ended up in this foreign world. For it must be another world — entirely. Altaïr has travelled the vastness of his world — open waters and fraught, green forests, deserts and mountainscapes — only for a few years, but that is how he knows that  _this_ , this is not his world.

 

The streets are rural, illuminated by light encapsulated in shapely metal and rhomb-blown glass. They are dirty, still, so at least this is something he recognizes. But they are not dirty with a desert storm sweeping past, nor with the excess mural waste from newly rebuilt clay cots and the slab from concrete houses. The dust on these streets is not sweeps of dust from the deep recesses of Masyaf’s grand library. This city, looming and alien — smells sharply of something foreign. It cloys the air.

 

Altaïr twitches whenever the roar of this world’s foreign carriages go past him. Now, they do, two of them in quick succession. The carriages bring with them a deafening spin of wheels and motion, and they leave behind clouds of air that is difficult to inhale. He is crouched around the corner of a brick house in maroon, with an orange tiled roof and encased glass windows. All of the buildings in this city stretch vastly high towards the sky, higher than houses have any right to be. And its inhabitants — whenever he breaches running the rooftops to scurry from one hideout to another, and come past an open window, speak in a foreign, clipped tongue he thinks sounds vaguely Western.

 

He has established a number of hideouts across the city. In terms of city borders, and width, isn’t very large. It scales larger than the Holy City, certainly, though it could never have it beat in terms of grandeur. But it doesn’t take him very long to cross, once he has somewhat figured out a few routes that take him from one city gate to another. And it is decidedly smaller than say, Istanbul.

 

He finds, despite how foreign it is, piquing a curiosity previously unknown to him. He watches its people scurry past where he hides out every day, an unthreatened sort of calm bequeathing whatever errand they run.

 

This is not a city under siege, he learns, and it isn’t a city that threatens to become overrun by one. Whatever it is he hopes to find out, studying them and attempting to gather enough linguistic knowledge to decipher what little conversation filters through once in a while, it isn’t news of local warfare being wagered. One day, he snatches a local paper from a stand filled with periodicals, and while he can’t very well read the angular, slanted script, he recognizes a little of it as maybe the Anglo-Saxon of King Richard’s men. It’s regal in a way he knows, but too dense and, ultimately, foreign, for him to understand. What he does understand: these are not wartime scriptures. They’re entries of a people who know peace. This, unto itself, is unfamiliar to him. Enough to mark this venture into a foreign world as _truly_ foreign.

 

Today, it rains.

 

The steel and glass light sources are dim in the downpour. The rain slathers down unto the streets steadily. It taps an uneven rhythm, pouring onto the roofs which, Altaïr has learned, are slippery even when dry.

 

For all of what his grand title and vast experience may have entitled him to in his own world, he’s now, in this one, cowering in a dark archway beneath a bridge in the western reaches of the city, decidedly keeping to the ground in the weather.

 

He lounges nearby the huge rectangle of cut off area he figures for this city’s palace, or government building — however this city’s governing body chooses to reside. It is clean, anatomically precise, and looks not unlike every other Western city’s palatial grounds that Altaïr has ever visited. The city, in itself, while modern, is a little like every other Western city Altaïr has ever visited. Its parliamentary quarters are costly, it has a slum to the north, and its rich quarters stretching a few square miles around him.

 

He hasn’t truly walked among the people of the city quite yet, still a little too comfortable in the cloak of shadow, to make acquaintance with a people he cannot communicate with properly. Still, to him, there is no unrest here. That doesn’t mean that security is lax. His experience in stealing is expertly, if he’d say so himself, but even in the corners of the city that does not expect theft, it’s difficult. Supplies come at a steep price, and he often finds himself clenching down on the hunger, squatting another few hours, rather than come out too early and risk himself. The city guard carries hollowed out steel pipes, which shoot lead projectiles. It’s a decidedly futuristic invention, which Altaïr suspects will have him killed, should one hit its mark.

  
  
The rain continues steadily. Above where he’s currently hiding, there is a wet slide. A screech of the unknown substance the carriages have for wheels. Someone snaps something in that Anglo-Saxon imitation he does not know, and subsequently, the noise of a large crowd scuttling by commences.

 

Altaïr sinks deeper into himself, into the hooded shirt that’s made in an itchy sort of cotton that feels very unlike the cotton his own robes are made of. He starts at a moderate pace through the tunnel. He hasn’t figured where he is going yet, but moving, albeit slowly, is bound to take him closer to whatever target he sets. It also helps in not rousing anyone’s suspicion.

 

As it happens, quick steps suddenly approach from behind.

 

Altaïr is worn enough not to physically react. Chances are, these footsteps are not for him, despite the nauseating wave of unsettle curling in his stomach. He has been in this foreign world for thirteen days, and so far, no one who might have seen him has made any particular note of his person. None of the city guards have more than caught a glimpse of him, there and gone. He isn’t recognizable. He forces himself to appear loose, his shoulders slumping. He continues walking. The steps approach gradually closer.

 

Suddenly, the steps are joined by clipped words. They sound harried, insistent.

 

He hasn’t learned enough to understand what the person approaching him is saying, but he’s come to know intent by tone of voice. Thus far, his ears have familiarized themselves with what is most likely a casual greeting, and he would recognize the tone of voice used when one person is addressing another no matter the language barrier. So when there comes a “Hallo?” from his close left, he knows it’s intended for him.

 

Altaïr does not reply, and quickens his pace a fraction.

  
  
His pursuer picks it up. The person calls out to him once again. He uses the same word. Altaïr wants to swear by something blasphemous. The person says something again, longer this time, a string of words he can’t know. It sounds like a question, or a command. He can’t know which, but were he to guess, it wouldn’t bode well for him.

 

He is forced to calculate: he has a few paces yet on his pursuer, which is more than enough for him. However, he is unfamiliar with this part of the city. What he knows is that its blind alleys are hard to scale, should he encounter one in flight. It’s all too likely, given that the terrain isn’t familiar to him. But, stopping now could prove disastrous. It could also be fortunate, but given the insistence of the calling and the quick pace that his pursuer is now going at, he very much doubts it.

 

Fight or flight, it’s a simple flip of a coin. _Is it not always_ , Altaïr thinks, a touch dry, and draws a full bodied breath through his mouth.

 

He runs.

  
  
That is all, before he collapses, something poised, and striking, at the back of his neck.

 

 

*

 

  
  
Altaïr knows disorientation like the touch of an old friend.

 

A tile loosening beneath his fingers, airways cut off by one of his brothers in a sparring session, a guard’s sabre in his windpipe, his first Leap having gone wrong — unconsciousness is inherently familiar to him.

 

But waking slowly, subject to a piercing light above that is alike the encompassing light of the sun, but missing its warmth, makes him jolt awake, at once with the sensation of fear creeping, shriveling, through his bones. The thought of  _escape_ , more an emotion than simply thought of mind, brings him from beneath with an intensity he has not experienced many times. He opens his eyes at once, wide and staring, and wills himself halfway up.

 

Up — into a pale room, void of much, still mostly tucked beneath the covers in a bed. A faint buzzing leaves the room slightly static, and a  _tick_  of metal that moves with consistent stress makes an odd companion noise. Everything is unfamiliar: from the smooth embroidery of the sheets that slide on his oddly uncovered legs and waist, to the odd luminescence of the light sources in the room. The floor, large, square tiles that look slick to the touch.

 

“You talk in your sleep.”

 

It comes from Altaïr’s right. The direction that, incidentally, is also the origin of the off kilter, clicking noise. He snaps around, marveling for a second at the sound of his own tongue being spoken, if clumsily, in this world that is still not his own.

 

The man — boy, Altaïr at once changes his mind — is perched on a stool at the far end of the room. It’s fashioned in curved metal and has a fat cushion. The boy’s legs are crossed, and his arms are crossed. A long, yellow plait droops over his shoulder. Altaïr attempts to concentrate on the sight of an actual human being this close in his vicinity after so long, rather than the rising squall of panic that threatens to push all the air out of his lungs. He feels his own heart, thick and reverberating warningly, creeping towards his throat. He doesn’t know if it would prove wise to speak.

 

The boy flips a gloved hand dismissively in the air, as though reading Altaïr’s thoughts, dispersing of the uncertainty. “You sound a little Ishbalan, but your expressing when talking is more — “ he pauses, clearly looking for the appropriate words, which Altaïr now senses lilts a little bit in an accent, a different use of his vowels and consonants, “It is more flowing. Like water,” the boy finishes. He looks sour, appearing dismayed with his fumbling for expression. “I am not sure how to – “

  
  
“Fluid,” Altaïr supplies at once, thought slower than his tongue, “You mean that it is fluid.”

 

The boy nods, head tilting a little as he studies him. “Yes,” he agrees, “Fluid,” he tests the word out a few times, “Are you from Ishbal?”

 

“Ish-u-ball?” Altaïr echoes, fitting the word on his tongue. It’s a little like they’re exchanging new, alien expressions with each other.

 

His visitor, or captor, he doesn’t, after all, truly know — nods. Altaïr shakes his head.

 

He expects there to be following questions, prodding, because if he isn’t from this origin, from which he looks to be, apparently, then he must be from somewhere else within this universe. He doesn’t quite figure how the pleased curl of mouth fits on the boy’s face then, but it slowly unfurls on him, as though he’s discovered a treasured secret. “I figured so,” he says, “You do not much look it.”

 

Altaïr doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he simply waits. There are a million questions crowding up in his brain, but he’s not sure how to express any of them.

 

“Could you tell me how you got here, in plain words?” asks the boy.

 

Altaïr hesitates. “In plain words, certainly,” he says, taking precarious note of going slow, “But in terms that make sense? I am not quite so sure.”

 

The boy nods. He doesn’t look particularly surprised, “Do not worry,” he says, “There is no need to keep it — how do you say, understandable. I am not an _idiot_.”

 

The final word, he says in another language. All the same, Altaïr understands its implications. He slants half a smile, quite without meaning to. The boy tilts his head slightly, then twists his wrist. His hand, previously balled up in a fist and rested on his belly, turns upwards, revealing —

  
  
Altaïr’s heart jumps, he is sure it reverberates through his spine — his fear evident. Because the stranger twirls the Apple slowly upon the flat of his palm.

 

“I guessed,” says the boy, simply. He tucks the Apple away again, slipping it down and into a small case situated at his side. He says it as though it is both the key holding every single answer, and as though it is simultaneously plain and as uninteresting as the weather.

 

Altaïr doesn’t know how to respond to this. His thoughts whirl, spin, but never quite become a chain of causality. He feels like moving through sticky tar, like he’s been induced with Opium, or any drug like it.  

 

“I am Edward Elric, State Alchemist from Amestris,” says the boy, unexpectedly, “Who are you?”

  
  
Altaïr hesitates, doubt and primal fear at this wholly unknown vacuum he has been unceremoniously thrown into. He studies the boy, looking no more than ten and five, at most. But that isn’t what he sees: rather, he sees the odd glimmer in the boy’s eyes. A remarkable sort of intelligence. Belligerent and sharp, much beyond his apparent years.

 

Altaïr sees how this boy sees the world, and knows that perhaps this is how he looked, the first time he was shown, truly, just what the Apple was capable of doing.

 

  
“Altaïr Ibn-La’Ahad,” he offers up after a heady stretch of silence. “Of the Levantine Brotherhood of the Assassins of Syria.”

  
  
The previously small smile on the boy’s — Edward’s, face widens. He flashes teeth, not in spite, or in anger, but in excitement, “That is a start,” he says, in crooked Arabic.

 

Altaïr, after another moment in silence, agrees. That is, indeed, a start.

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> revised and updated to a newer date as of today, eleventh of july, since i’m thinking of reviving this ol’ plot bunny of mine, and make something of the previously started series.


End file.
